The Cassandra Page

"And indeed, the burden of Cassandra's "gift" is evident in mythology. She predicted the outcome of many disastrous events. In one memorable example, Cassandra announced the dire consequences of the Trojans accepting the infamous Wooden Horse from their Greek opponents. But as Apollo made certain, no one believed Cassandra when she warned her companions about the future. And this, in the end, was to be Cassandra's tragic fate."

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

A man with Aids said he would have been dead two years ago had Diana not touched him; a three-year-old visited by Diana while in a coma had a miraculous recovery and has now left his best teddy outside Kensington Palace; a nine-year-old treated for heart disease said that Diana had visited her ten times and had offered to do the family’s washing if they’d just drop it round at the Palace. For some, a world without the Saint was too much to bear: there were reports of at least two “Diana-related” suicides.

No one could doubt the sincerity of the people’s reaction. But their sincerity did not make it any less repellent. The supposedly reserved, bloodless Brits had, like the Princess, swallowed wholesale the vocabulary of American Oprahfied psychobabble, a depressing enough prospect. But they had fused it with the brutish vulgarity of modern British mass culture to create a truly horrible mutant: aggressive empathy. Their message to their Sovereign was in essence: If you can’t come out and feel our pain, we’ll come in and give you some of your own to feel.

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

At least in Indochina, those who got it so horribly wrong – the Kerrys and Fondas and all the rest – could claim they had no idea of what would follow.

To do it all over again in the full knowledge of what followed would turn an aberration into a pattern of behavior. And as the Sirik Mataks of Baghdad face the choice between staying and dying or exile and embittered evenings in the new Iraqi émigré restaurants of London and Los Angeles, who will be America's allies in the years ahead?

Quote of the day - Michelle Malkin

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Quote of the day - Pam Geller

The world is turned on its ear and nothing means what its supposed to mean anymore. Islam has destroyed the words -- peace, charity, justice .....even "freedom" in the Koran "hurriyya" translates into "freedom as perfect slavery"... Forget everything you think you know and learn everything.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn

Violent crime committed by fine upstanding members of the Undocumented-American community is now a routine feature of American life. But who cares? In 2002, as the "Washington Sniper" piled up his body count, "experts" lined up to tell the media that he was most likely an "angry white male," a "macho hunter" or an "icy loner." When the icy loner turned out to be a black Muslim named Muhammad accompanied by an illegal immigrant from Jamaica, the only angry white males around were the lads in America's newsrooms who were noticeably reluctant to abandon their thesis: Early editions of the New York Times speculated that Muhammad and John Lee Malvo were being sought for "possible ties to 'skinhead militia' groups," which seemed a somewhat improbable alliance given the size of Mr. Muhammad's hair in the only available mug shot. As for his illegal sidekick, Malvo was detained and released by the INS in breach of their own procedures.

American Thinker; MSM/DNC scandals; itemized list

These offenses have been going on for years, long before the internet. But there does seems to be a rise in the number of reported offenses in recent years. Did the number of offenses go up, or did the fraction of discovered offenses go up?

In a good number of these cases, the errors were caught by non-journalists, sometimes communicating over the internet.

If it is "too good to be true", or just too politically correct to be true, take it with a grain of salt - several grains, apparently, if from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The New Republic, CNN or Reuters.

The Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize just ain't all they're cracked up to be.

If this is the visible part of the iceberg, just how big is the iceberg?

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran [Katherine Graham]

The death of Katharine Graham, publisher of the WASHINGTON POST, was bound to test the nation's capital's capacity for fulsome praise. And to be sure, obsequies have seldom been so obsequious. Kay Graham, a hostess rather than a journalist, was the very personification of the Establishment. Well, someone has to be, and we can't hold that against her. But her eulogists insisted on turning the grande dame into a rebel: she had "no sacred cows," she "inspired" younger women by her example, she "shook the establishment," she was even, according to the ancient doyen of Washington courtiers, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., "a quiet revolutionary." Yes, just like that old Bastille-stormer Queen Victoria. Meaning no disrespect, the surest proof of Mrs. Graham's mediocrity is that nobody hated her.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Quote of the day - Garet Garrett - Blue Wound

A city is like a giant hanging by the umbilical cord. Its belly is outside of itself, at a distance, in the keeping of others. Cut it off from its belly and it surrenders or dies. As the first city was so the last one is. No city endures.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Quote of the day - Joe Sobran

Spring is here, and baseball has come back to Washington, D.C., in more ways than one: The city again has a major-league baseball team and Congress has held hearings on steroid abuse. It's clear that all the slugging records of recent years are highly dubious, and the sport will never be the same.

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Quote of the day - Mark Steyn [Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz]

How will we lose the war against "radical Islam"?

Well, it won't be in a tank battle. Or in the Sunni Triangle or the caves of Bora Bora. It won't be because terrorists fly three jets into the Oval Office, Buckingham Palace and the Basilica of St Peter's on the same Tuesday morning.

The war will be lost incrementally because we are unable to reverse the ongoing radicalization of Muslim populations in South Asia, Indonesia, the Balkans, Western Europe and, yes, North America. And who's behind that radicalization? Who funds the mosques and Islamic centers that in the past 30 years have set up shop on just about every Main Street around the planet?

. . . . . .

Sheikh Mahfouz has become very adept at using foreign courts to silence American authors – in effect, using distant jurisdictions to nullify the First Amendment.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Quote of the day - Cicero

Whatever is done without ostentation, and without the people being witnesses of it, is, in my opinion, most praiseworthy: not that the public eye should be entirely avoided, for good actions desire to be placed in the light; but notwithstanding this, the greatest theater for virtue is conscience.

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Quote of the day - Ann Coulter

Democrats don't care about the poor. They don't care about the children. They care about government teachers and other government bureaucrats — grimy, dowdy women who "woo" at political debates. Or as CNN calls them, the "young," "hip" crowd.